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November 16, 2011

November's Genealogy Challenge

It's time for November's Genealogy Challenge. Even though I was underwhelmed by the response to my October Genealogy Challenge I'm repeating the challenge this month.

October's Challenge was the "Give 15 Minutes" Challenge - to give 15 minutes of time to photograph tombstones in a local cemetery. In 15 minutes most genealogists can photograph between 30 and 60 burial stones!

Many genealogists told me they were going to do it. Many were enthusiastic about participating in a project that would bring more cemeteries online for all to view. So why was I underwhelmed?

Yes that certainly took longer than my suggested 15 minutes challenge, but even if Bobby had only done 15 minutes of photographing burial stones that would have been a great start.

Perhaps October was a busy month for genealogists. I refuse to believe that folks just aren't interested. I know genealogists are among the most giving and generous people there are! And sometimes life just gets in the way of good intentions. Maybe that is what happened in October.

So I'm challenging all my readers once again - please try to find 15 minutes of time to go out and photograph tombstones in a nearby cemetery. Don't worry if you only get 20 photos, or you get half the cemetery but not all. ANYTHING is good!

Just think of how many cemeteries we can bring online if we all make that effort to find 15 minutes once a month. So won't you accept this Genealogy Challenge and help bring more cemeteries online?

If you upload your photos to a photo sharing site such as Picasa Web Album or Flickr, you can easily get them to me for the Cemetery Walk video creation. You can also email them to me at olivetreegenealogy @ gmail.com (no spaces of course in the email address)

16 comments:

I love this idea. I'll have to see where I can go near my work to squeeze in the time. I just got the billion graves app on my cell phone and it makes it super easy to get them uploaded too. I'll let you know when I do it!

I didn't know about your Cemetery Walk videos, and have checked out your blog listings. Nice! Do you have a text listing of all the cemeteries you have 'Walks' for?

I'm a volunteer for Find A Grave, so I get about 100-150 photos in an hour's time each time I visit my local cemetery.

While I like the BillionGraves idea for its speed; I'm not a smartphone user so that's not an option for me. As a genealogist, I really prefer that we gravers concentrate our efforts into ONE or TWO main areas - Find A Grave, maybe USGenWeb Tombstone Transcription Project. I can't keep track of all the new gravestone sites and it seems like our efforts are spread out among too many options. Just my opinion! Like you said, "It's all good."

Marilyn, those are good points you made. I don't actually agree though that genealogists/volunteers should concentrate on one or two projects.

I had this same discussion when my site Olive Tree Genealogy was bringing ships passenger lists online. I was the first site to do this, but others soon followed. ISTG had way more volunteers and lists came online faster. Then Ancestry began and so on.

But it didn't matter to me that others were also doing passenger lists! My only beef was when other sites duplicated what I already had online. Not for personal reasons but because to me it was a waste of time. If the data is already online why duplicate it?

I've always felt the more the merrier!

With Google and other search engines it's pretty easy to type in the name of a cemetery or a location and find one of my Cemetery Walks, or FindAGrave or whatever location holds the cemetery a researcher is looking for.

After all if volunteers didn't help the smaller sites or smaller projects, folks like me would stop maintaining their sites. What would be the point if we couldn't start a project that interested us, no matter how small?

Just my 2cents worth :-)

I don't have a text listing of all my Cemetery Walks but that's a good idea. Right now genealogists can either go to my youtube channel at http://www.youtube.com/my_videos?feature=mhee or click on the topic choice CEMETERY WALKS here on my blog. I also post them on Google+

This must be my lucky month! I completed the challenge before I even knew about it - LOL! Last weekend went to Baltimore National Cemetery to visit my great uncle's grave. Spent easily more than an hour photographing US vets from the Spanish-American War up to Afghanistan. Must be at least 100 veterans, their spouses and children. Will try to do the same again in another cemetery before the month ends, so it really counts!

Jenny, do you ever get down to Annapolis National Cemetery or know of someone who does? I have a Civil War Vet there, Levi Howard. I have the location in the cemetery.

I have taken hundreds of tombstone pictures in Massachusetts, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. Have place many of them on Find-a-grave but some of the cemeteries are not on Find-a-grave. I have contacted them several times about adding the cemeteries but they have not responses. I want to get them on the web. But this is the way to do it.

My mother and I went out and took pictures together after our Thanksgiving meal today. I hate that I missed seeing your post last month, because I have a cemetary on the edge of my neighborhood and am happy to go out anytime the weather isn't too cold. I will be emailing you shortly!

Went to the Central Texas Veterans Cemetery this morning and took some pictures. They all had wreaths on them which was beautiful. I'm heading to do silly PTA stuff, but I'll post them on Picasa and email the link later this evening when I have them up!

Great idea. I hope you get more participation this time. It looks like you might!

I'm an incurable collector of
antiques, an avid genealogist and a messy but creative cook! I blog, i write history and genealogy books. My main genealogy website is Olive Tree Genealogy http://olivetreegenealogy.com/

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